


Hot Chocolate

by flippyspoon



Series: Brightonverse [11]
Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-13
Updated: 2015-02-13
Packaged: 2018-03-12 04:14:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3343322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flippyspoon/pseuds/flippyspoon





	Hot Chocolate

Having been in a relationship with Jimmy for a whole year now, Thomas had told him all the important things.  Jimmy knew about Philip and Edward and how he’d injured his hand and every rotten thing he’d done to get at Bates (stories Jimmy often made him repeat, giggling, and making snarky comments about old Bates the whole time) or to try to get ahead at Downton.  Yet there were some things, small things, that Thomas had never mentioned; little idiosyncrasies or minor likes and dislikes.  Some had not yet occurred to him to mention or they hadn’t come up naturally in conversation.  But some Thomas had distinctly not mentioned because he found them embarrassing somehow.

This was true of his passionate love for hot chocolate.

Thomas’s favorite beverage was not tea, coffee, anything alcoholic, or the ginger pop he bought for a treat when they ate fish and chips for dinner on the pier.  Thomas’s favorite drink bar none was hot chocolate.  The only thing that might be better than drinking hot chocolate himself (hot and sweet and comforting) would be kissing Jimmy when they had both been drinking hot chocolate. This had never happened.  But the thought was delightful.  Yet it felt like such a childish preference that Thomas had never mentioned it, or made hot chocolate in their flat, or ordered it anywhere they’d gone that offered it.  

One unseasonably chilly April by the sea, Thomas found himself direly missing hot chocolate.  And missing hot chocolate made him think on his mother who made it perfectly before she’d gone and fallen through the ice and died.  And the whole thing made him terribly gloomy, but he couldn’t stand to say so to Jimmy.

“I’m sad because I miss hot chocolate,” he imagined himself saying.  He could just see Jimmy’s face.  If he thought Thomas stupid, he wouldn’t be able to hide it.  Jimmy could never seem to control his expressions, even if their meaning was not always obvious.

Unfortunately being gloomy made him unhappy in other ways and he wasn’t always adept and seeing those connections.  He snapped at Jimmy for making jokes at work meetings when Thomas was trying to manage the others, he snapped at the other servers at The Moon Cat, and barked at the performers, and rolled his eyes at the patrons.  It was all sparked by this small silly thing of missing hot chocolate.

Then again, perhaps it was more than just hot chocolate after all.

Walking to the club one day, the two of them passed a toy shop window with a display of large toy soldiers marching in a line.  The soldier up front was banging on a drum.  It looked exactly like a toy soldier Thomas had owned as a child; wooden and all in red, left leg raised high to step tall, a thin black mustache on its dour face.  Thomas had dragged his own toy soldier around for probably two years.  He didn’t know exactly when he’d lost it or how, but in his mind it was around the time his mother had died.

He’d paused in front of the window, smoking his cigarette.  Jimmy was going on about new music at the club.

“What is it?” Jimmy looked at him, curious and bright.

“Oh, I…”  And Thomas thought of Jimmy curious and bright at The Moon Cat, surrounded by men and ladies all begging his attention. Jimmy was always a favorite at the club.  Schiller liked him to MC more and more because people thought him charming.  Thomas shook his head.  “Nothin’.”  Thomas walked on and felt gloomier.

There followed a string of nights where Thomas had awful dreams.  He dreamed of the trenches, or prison, or that he was back at Downton and Jimmy had never stopped hating him. He woke up in the night and Jimmy was always asleep, which was hardly his fault.  When Thomas woke from a nightmare, he was often completely silent.  He lay there on those nights and watched Jimmy peacefully asleep and thought of how Jimmy looked at Thomas sometimes as if he were some amazing new invention or made of gold itself. He got it into his mind that Jimmy might think him mad for worrying over silly dreams.  He didn’t want Jimmy to ever stop looking at him as if he were the greatest man in the world.  He smoked at the window and looked out at the dark ocean instead of waking Jimmy up.

On a Saturday night, Thomas woke up at three o’clock in the morning and didn’t get to sleep for hours and slept in very late.  He remembered his dream; his father had invaded their flat and taken all their things and the floor was made of ice and Jimmy was angry that Thomas had let his father in.  

Thomas sighed and rose, throwing on a robe, and cleaned his teeth. He rubbed his eyes and stared out the window where the sea was grey and calm.  They’d made no plans for their Sunday off, but everything would be closed anyhow.

Downstairs, Thomas’s current favorite record (the Clarence Williams) was playing softly on the gramophone he’d bought Jimmy for Christmas.  He heard Jimmy shuffling around in the kitchen, but he smelled no breakfast, thought it was probably nearer to lunch.

“Thought you’d never get up,” Jimmy said.

“Well, it’s Sunday.”

“The Lord’s day.”

“Huh. Right.”  Thomas sat at the kitchen table and felt a strong desire to go back to bed.  At the stove, Jimmy was fooling around with a sauce pan and a ladle.  “What’re you doing over there?”

"It’s a surprise."

“I think it’s going to rain today,” Thomas mumbled.

“That’ll make the surprise even better.”

“Rain will make the surprise better?”  Any other time he might have been pleased at the prospect of a surprise from Jimmy.  Now he only felt dreadful and he couldn’t think how it had all started.

“Right,” Jimmy said.  “Here we are.”

Jimmy put some things on a tray and marched over with a footman’s gait.  He set the tray of coffee on the table.  No, not coffee. It was-

“Hot chocolate,” Thomas said, his voice slightly unsteady.

Jimmy set Thomas’s mug in front of him.  It was still steaming.  There was a ramekin of whipped cream on the tray and a silver tin of cinnamon.

“Whipping cream?”  Jimmy said. He was smiling his warmest smile. 

“Um…yes,” Thomas said.  ”Thanks.”

Jimmy spooned a dollop of thick whipping cream into Thomas’s cup and sat back, looking very satisfied.  “I like a little cinnamon, myself.”

“Why’d you make hot chocolate?”  Thomas said.  He felt like he was still dreaming.  There was something odd about Jimmy’s prescience that was just too lovely to be true.

“I remember you telling Daisy once that it’s your favorite when Patmore made a pot,” Jimmy said.  He blew into his mug and took a sip.  “Ah! Careful, still too hot.”

“When?”  Thomas said.

“I don’t know… Uh, sometime between the whole trouble and the fair. We weren’t quite speaking then, of course.”

“I didn’t think you’d remember anything I said all that year.”

“Well…I do.”  Jimmy bit his lip and scratched his head, blushing.

_Oh, stop that, you wonderful man._

Jimmy said, “You’ve seemed…I don’t know, mopey lately-”

“Haven’t been mopey,” Thomas muttered.

“Yes, you have. But I haven’t  wanted to say anything because, I didn’t want to…presume?”

“Jimmy, we live together. I know what your cock tastes like. You can ask me if something’s wrong.”

“Yeah.” He chortled and took a tentative sip of his cocoa.  “I haven’t done this, ya know. It’s been a year, but it’s not as if I’m an expert.  And you can be prickly.”

“Well, _you_ can be prickly.”

“I know!”  Jimmy looked affronted but he laughed again. “Anyhow, I thought the hot chocolate might cheer you up.”

Thomas took a sip of his hot chocolate.  Strictly speaking, it wasn’t as creamy and rich as Patmore used to make and nothing would ever be as good as the way his mother had made it. But Jimmy had made it just to be sweet.  And here they lived in their flat by the sea…  Thomas grinned for the first time in a couple of weeks.

“You have no idea,” he said quietly.  

They sat sipping their cocoa for a time and Thomas felt greatly comforted.  He felt so happy that he found himself saying, “Do you remember when we stopped in front of the toy shop the other day?”

“With the toy soldiers?” Jimmy said.

“Yes.” Thomas nodded.  “There was one up front banging a drum.  I had a soldier just like that when I was  a boy.  Made me eh, wistful, I suppose.  Stupid.”

Jimmy gazed at him and didn’t say anything, until Thomas felt wretchedly embarrassed.  He shouldn’t have said anything, only he felt as if they were coming upon something new and he’d felt brave about it.

“Did you ever read the story of ‘The Steadfast Tin Soldier’?”  Jimmy said, his brows knit together.

“I think so,” Thomas said, nodding, as the story came back to him.  “That’s the one with the one-legged soldier and the ballerina?”

“And they die at the end,” Jimmy said grimly.  “My mum read it to me when I was very young.  I was so angry about it… Here the bloke goes on all these adventures and loves the ballerina and some idiot comes along and throws him in the fire and it’s all for nothin’.  I was so mad about it, I didn’t want to hear anymore stories from the book.”

“Sensitive sort,” Thomas said.  

“Not at all!”  Jimmy said with a snort.  “Funny thing was, I would have been just the sort of boy to throw a tin soldier into the fire for no reason at all.”

“Yeah, you would have done,” Thomas said, and before Jimmy could manage a frown he went on: “But you’re not that sort of man.”

“Oh.” Jimmy beamed at him.  “I hadn’t thought of it that way.  I suppose I’m not now.  Probably your fault.”

“My steadfastness won you over,” Thomas said dryly.

“Yeah.  Hmm, your steadfast lip’s got cream all over it.”  Jimmy reached over to wipe the whipping cream away and Thomas caught his hand, kissing the inside of his wrist.  “What shall we do today, my love?”

“Let’s just talk,” Jimmy mumbled, and leaned over to kiss Thomas’s mouth which tasted of hot chocolate.

 


End file.
